Opinion
Surrogate advertising can be stopped more easily than it seems
Summary
- There’s no grey zone in the use of an ad campaign to sell something other than what’s advertised upfront. Either it’s surrogate or it’s not. And to curb this practice, India will have to close all avenues for it. Kingfisher, for example, shouldn’t have been cleared for take-off.
One remarkable aspect of Kingfisher having gone out of business as an airline is the fact that we can still be invited to “get high" on Kingfisher. While it refers to a colourful bird, the carrier took its name from a popular brand of beer marketed by the same UB Group. Until it folded up, this group’s aviation play was clearly a business in its own right.
Even so, it was a case of ‘brand synergy’ (in B-school speak) as much as surrogate advertising, defined as a campaign for one thing on the face of it and something else in its market effect. As a brand, if Kingfisher retains space in people’s memory, some of the credit is due to an impression left by UB’s high-profile aviation venture.
The name was painted large across its aircraft exteriors, with every flight assuring it visibility of a kind unseen since the zeppelin era of advertising. This airborne medium was even more snazzy, if anything, as planes flew around airing the brand’s visual cues and attracting eyeballs.
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Today, despite the UB Group’s woes, the alcoholic beverage that sells under that label has proven so resilient against a freshly brewed wave of rivalry that even Heineken, UB’s Dutch equity partner, should thank those flights. The point, though, is this: Should an airline called Kingfisher ever have been allowed into Indian skies?
If the answer is yes, then we will find it hard to police surrogacy in advertising, a practice that may not always be outright deception, but is often too clever by half. As reported by Mint, India’s ministry of consumer affairs has draft rules under review that aim to curb advertisements which mask what they’re out to hawk.
That such ads pervade online spaces and TV airwaves is beyond doubt. All kinds of party knick-knacks, from tumblers and ice-boxes to music playlists and fashion attire, have been launched under brand insignia shared with fluids that can’t be advertised openly because they contain alcohol.
Since these low-key launches are decoys, typically, with token production runs just to prove their existence, one regulatory proposal involves asking businesses to report the market availability and sales volumes of advertised items. If that’s not strict enough, companies might even be asked to issue public notices of such data.
Also read: Govt bans surrogate ads, issues guidelines to prevent misleading content
This approach may sound like a crackdown, but it isn’t. Any leeway for ‘genuine’ brand extensions would have ad hoc calls being taken by officials, spelling scope for another inspector raj. As we’ve seen before, grey zones can generate black money.
More pertinently, Kingfisher Airlines was a bona fide business. Its tickets were available and it had sales volumes (at least till it didn’t). Its rise and fall left a trail of damage, but it also catapulted a brand of beer to extraordinary levels of popular recall across the country.
Sure, aviation is too expensive a sector for a rational investor to use solely as a beer mask, but we can’t deny the surrogacy that was at play. It’s the same with other media. Regardless of the stated aims of an ad campaign, it either plays a surrogate role or it doesn’t. As with pregnancy, it’s either-or.
To end the practice, policy will also need to place principle above pretence. The only clear-cut way out would be to ban the advertising of anything that shares its brand identity or appeal with an item that must be denied publicity in public interest.
Also read: Seinfeld’s spoof on Kellogg: Brand theft or celebrity endorsement?
An all-out ban, in other words, is the only earnest way to tackle a problem that has outlasted every regime’s restraints so far. And, no, in retrospect, a beer brand should not have been cleared for take-off.
